Saturday, October 01, 2005

Exam Fever.....
It's that time of the year again. In my family, the level of exam anxiety between parent & child/student is directly proportional. The less anxious the student = The more anxious the parent. Well, my boys are as carefree as wild birds. So I suspect I ought to be busy sprouting plenty of white hairs. One of them is very diligent about studying......every day he gets on the internet, searches a variety of websites, painstakingly studies pages & pages of cheat sheets.......of his favourite computer games.
So I decided I have to sit down with this fella & study also. Life Science is like gobbledygook to me but Geog was fun - especially checking out the atlas. It's a challenge really - much of it still boils down to test taking ability. Just need to strive to maintain the love of learning in there somewhere.
Interesting article in the latest Readers' Digest titled 'I Won't Let Our Boy Go to University'. This father in UK has concluded that "universities more closely resemble job training centres and remedial catch-up courses than they do centres of learning for learning's sake". There's also the factor of high costs and then graduating with a huge debt, and too many graduates chasing too few jobs. Bold move..........perhaps he's right.
I've given this area a little bit of thought and joked around with friends. I would be ok if they didn't go the academic route. They'd be just fine if I have an auto mechanic, an electrician & a plumber at my disposal. Do you know it'll cost me $120 for a technician to come down and take a look at my sliding gate? Look only.......parts & fixing additional. Then there's the cars....every time they go in, it's always a couple of hundred dollars.......and every so often, just add another zero in there. I enjoy watching these Mr Fixit guys do their thing..........and invariably find that I'm muttering to myself that I could've done it. Tim's very wary of me, of course, he thinks I know just enough to be dangerous. He's probably right.

5 comments:

auntymich said...

Sounds familiar ie cheatsheet downloading. Was it only yesterday when they had to ask me to do it...children grow up so fast...

pong said...

mingying. thanks for the encouragement. at least now i know i am in the company of parents who suffers the same fate as choon and i ... :)

PEW said...

Allo Ming Ying, I did my part and told Tim to get you a RX-8...don't say don't have ah...it is a good stress reliever...heh

Mingying LEE said...

Hi Dennis,
That's hilarious. Oh dear...pls continue studying tho. Don't want to mislead anybody & have parents coming after me instead!
Hi PEW,
WHERE GOT? Last time I checked, the big bus hasn't morphed into an RX-8 yet!

PEW said...

Tim thinks I sarbo him leh by recommending such things..ha ha but more than glad to let you and mich have a joy drive but I have to warn you, once you floor the RX-8...your life will never be the same...(I leave you to interpret it)